


Warm Like Cinnamon

by graysonsflight



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Banter, Dick Grayson Whump, F/M, Hair Washing, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Blood, Soft and Fluffy, these two are my favorite idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26037715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graysonsflight/pseuds/graysonsflight
Summary: Oracle wasn’t expecting to see Nightwing on her security feed when her system let her know someone was trying to break in. She wasn't expecting the blood smeared over his face either.
Relationships: Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson
Comments: 21
Kudos: 170





	Warm Like Cinnamon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dottie_wan_kenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dottie_wan_kenobi/gifts).



> So this story is from an ask game that got a little out of hand. What **should** have been a 100 word rant morphed into a 500 word drabble, became a _I have no self control here's a one-shot_. Thank you so much to Dottie for the... uh... prompt?

** Warm Like Cinnamon **

Barbara gazed down at the blinking light on her monitor. Someone was trying to slip past her security system. And they weren’t doing a particularly good job of it. She sighed and brought up the security footage on her computer screen; ready to flip the switch to electrify everything a possible intruder would be touching as they tried to scramble open the locks on her upper windows.

She dropped her hands when she saw the familiar blue emblem splashed across her intruder’s chest. With a laugh, she switched gears, instead of electrocuting him on sight, she patched herself through to his comm link.

“Boy Wonder, what are you doing?” she asked, her annoyance mostly for show. Barbara couldn’t understand why he hadn’t just used his clearance code or even called ahead before stopping by. But as the seconds ticked by without a response, something like worry began knotting in her stomach.

“Nightwing?” she said, double-checking to be sure she was on the correct frequency. When he still didn’t respond, Barbara knew something was wrong. She zoomed in on his image, her eyes now seeing the red she’d missed before; his face was streaked in blood.

“Shit.” Barbara quickly typed in her manual override code, popping the window open, and swore again as Dick practically fell through it. She pushed herself out into her living room to find him sprawled out on his back beneath the windowsill.

“Dick, what happened?” she demanded. Her mind raced as she moved towards him. Barbara really hoped he’d be able to get up on his own, if not things were going to get more complicated.

“Hey Babs,” he groaned, lifting his head to look at her briefly before dropping it back to the hardwood. “Got through your security system.”

“You didn’t,” she corrected. “I let you in to bleed all over my floor. Now tell me what happened.”

“It was a bad night,” he whispered, slowly coiling his body together before pushing himself up against the wall, his knees pulled up tight to his chest.

“Uh-huh,” Barbara prompted as she came to a stop in front of him. Upon closer inspection she was happy to see that most of the cuts, and there were dozens of them, were pretty shallow. She leaned forward, pressing her thumb to the side of his mask to let the scanner get a read on her fingerprint. The second the white lenses retracted, she pulled it free as gently as could.

“I got thrown through a couple of windows,” he admitted, his voice thick and a little ragged.

“One just wasn’t enough for you?”

Dick’s lips lifted in an exhausted smile as his eyes met hers: “What can I say? I’m a slow learner.” He leaned into her hand as she moved it up his face towards his hairline.

“You managed to bring some of the windows back with you, I see,” she said feeling the tiny shards tangled in with thick hair.

“Well,” he sighed, “nothing says love quite like diamonds, I’m afraid this was the best I could do on such short notice.”

Barbara laughed despite herself, the knots in her stomach relaxing. If he could still make his horrible jokes, then things would probably be okay. She took his chin in her hand and started angling it to keep assessing the damage, her brain starting to put together a list of what she’d need to treat him.

Dick kept his eyes open, watching her as she examined him.

“Your reactions are a little slow,” she told him. “You were thrown head first?”

“I didn’t get my hands up for the second one,” he admitted. “It’s where most of the damage came from.”

Barbara nodded, locking her chair in place as she offered hands down to him to lend some leverage. “Let’s get you into the bathroom.”

Dick groaned as he used her to move up from the floor, arms braced on her chair to steady himself.

“Am I missing an injury?” Barbara asked, anxious again as she followed him into the bathroom.

“Mild concussion, maybe,” Dick conceded, making Barbara wince as he crashed into the doorframe of the bathroom.

“Yeah?”

“And I’m tired.”

Barbara’s brows furrowed as she watched him flinch away from the lights. He only admitted to being tired when he was about two days past his breaking point.

“Where do you want me?” he asked, turning slowly to face her.

As she pulled a med-kit from a shelf, Barbara was incredibly grateful for how big her bathroom was. “Can you sit on the edge of the tub, or do you need to be on the floor?” She watched him consider his options.

“Floor,” he sighed heavily, moving towards the tub.

Barbara handed him a fresh towel to sit on. “Strip down first please. I want to make sure you’re not trying to hide something from me.”

“Babs!” he whined. “You wound me. Would I try to hide something from you?”

She had to stop herself from listing all the different times Dick had tried to hide and or downplay the seriousness of an injury. Her face must have been screaming it out anyway, because he sighed heavily before starting to untangle himself from his Nightwing uniform.

Barbara sucked in a deep breath at the sight of him. Bruises littered his body in varying stages of healing.

“Dick,” she whispered, reaching out a hand to steady him as he finished. “What have you been doing?”

“Told you,” he mumbled, easing himself down onto the towel clad only in his boxer. “I’ve been tired. The cases have just been piling up.” His eyes slipped closed again as he draped his arms over his bent knees.

“Right,” Barbara sighed, trying to decide if she’d be calling Bruce later to help make sure Dick stayed grounded for a few nights. She leaned over him to turn the shower taps on. While she waited for the temperature to settle, Barbara pulled the tweezers out of the kit on her lap. “There’s a couple of pieces still in you,” she warned, tilting his head back.

Dick let her work without commentary – only hissing a little as she started swabbing his skin with disinfectant.

“That’s all of them,” Barbara said. “Nothing was too deep, so you don’t need any stitches. There’s one on the left side of your neck I want a Band-Aid on though.”

He kept his eyes closed as he nodded. “Stick it on and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Barbara couldn’t help the laugh that slipped from between her lips. It made Dick crack a single eye open to study her. Without thinking, she dropped a chaste kiss onto his brow.

“You’re going nowhere, Boy Wonder,” she corrected. “I’m going to finish getting you cleaned up and then I’m putting you to bed.”

“Babs,” he murmured, his voice low, mouth naturally by her ear as she pulled down the detachable showerhead. “I’ve still got – ”

“It can wait until you’re not running yourself into the ground,” she said, cutting him off. She tipped his head back over the tub again so she could wet his hair down. With the hand not holding the showerhead, she carefully finished cleaning the glass from in between the strands.

“Hold,” she instructed, handing Dick the showerhead so he could keep the water on him while she used both hands to add the shampoo.

He melted under her touch as Barbara worked her fingers through his hair, carefully scraping her nails against Dick’s scalp until he was putty in her hands.

“You still planning on fighting me?”

“Not if you keep doing that,” Dick conceded, his whole body relaxing. “I might actually fall asleep here.”

Barbara hummed as she switched out for the conditioner, the scent of cinnamon filling the air.

“I’m going to smell like you,” Dick observed, eyes closed and a smile on his face.

“That’s what happens when you try and bleed all over my floor,” she teased.

“Sorry I didn’t pack a bag first.”

“You might as well have stuff here,” Barbara said before giving herself a chance to think about it.

“Yeah?” Dick asked, both eyes now open, his face only inches from hers.

“I mean…” The words stuck in her throat, and she watched as the exhaustion slipped back into Dick’s smile.

“It’s okay, Babs,” he whispered, his eyes slipping closed again. “I know you’re just – ”

“I want you to,” she interrupted, her stomach flipping at the certainty she heard in her own voice.

“Babs, you don’t have to – ”

She quieted him by pressing her lips to him. “It would be nice,” she said, lips still ghosting over his, “to see you sometimes when you’re not ten seconds away from crashing.”

Dick hummed against her, letting her take back the showerhead to finish with his hair. They didn’t say anything more as she placed it back on the wall and brought out a clean washcloth to finish wiping him down. Once she was satisfied with her work, she tugged him forward until he was resting his head on the towel she’d placed in her lap.

“You still with me?” she asked, nails scratching lightly against the nape of his neck. He mumbled something almost like an answer before pushing himself back against the tub.

Dick reached out for the towel and roughly finished drying himself off. “You still have work you need to do?” he asked, blue eyes peering down at her hopefully.

“Some,” she sighed, already trying to figure out what she could put off until tomorrow. Barbara was so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed Dick moved until he was pressing a kiss to her cheek.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Leave the mess, I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

“So you _are_ staying?”

“Mmhmm,” Dick agreed. “How else am I going to buy you breakfast as a thank you?”

He followed her out of the bathroom and back towards the living room.

“Where are you going?” she asked when he veered off towards the couch.

“I was just going to –”

“Bedroom, Dick. I want you to _actually_ sleep.”

“Yes Babs,” he smiled, turning slowly on his heels and heading back towards the open door of her bedroom. She considered telling him that there was probably a shirt of his in her bottom drawer, but didn’t feel like dealing with the smirk that would likely follow that admission.

“You better be asleep by the time I get there!” she called instead, her cheeks warming at the muffled sound of his laughter. At the very least, Barbara needed to let the rest of the family know Dick was safe for the night, but after that, she was pretty sure the rest of her work could wait.

She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she wanted to see more of him, and the handful of kisses they’d shared tonight filled her with an easy kind of warmth, like the cinnamon smell that still clung to her hands. As quickly as she could, she finished her report for the night and sent out an all-clear message to the rest of the Bats still flying high along the Gotham City skyline. Dick had the right idea; the rest of it could wait until morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you loves for sharing the soft with me - I appreciate your time 💛 Your kudos and comments bring me joy.


End file.
